Author Wants to Rid Education Of ‘Nice’ Reform Policies

Enough "nice" school reform. In a book out this month, Frederick M.
Hess calls for a sharper-edged version of change centered on
tough-minded accountability, competition, and workforce design meant to
foster what he calls a "culture of competence" in the nation’s
schools.

This isn’t the first time the 36-year-old scholar, who directs
education policy studies at the Washington-based American Enterprise
Institute, has taken on what he terms "status quo" reformers. Mr. Hess
has made a name for himself tackling everything from teacher licensure
and the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards to the
difficulties of turning around urban school districts. Moreover, as the
executive editor of Education Next, a quarterly journal of
research and opinion, he’s regularly tweaked conventional wisdom
in education.

Common Sense School Reform, published by Palgrave Macmillan,
pulls together his ideas in one place. The mixture of analysis and tart
rhetoric sets up a dichotomy between "status quo" and "common sense"
advocates for change. ("Status Quo vs. Common Sense,"
Commentary, this issue.)

"Status quo reformers are all for reform so long as it changes
nothing of consequence," Mr. Hess writes. They’re happy to tinker
with curricular and pedagogical improvements, and even tread in such
areas as accountability and choice, he asserts, as long as those
measures don’t affect anybody’s job security or
fundamentally change what schools do.

In contrast, he writes, "common-sense reform" rests on the twin
pillars of accountability and flexibility. "Common-sense reform," he
says, "sets as its guiding beacon the goal of constructing a culture of
competence in schools: a culture where success is expected, excellence
is rewarded, and failure is not tolerated."

Challenging Assumptions

Doing so, Mr. Hess maintains, requires rethinking everything in
schools, including who should be running them, whom schools hire, how
schools are staffed, how performance is recognized and rewarded, how
ineffective employees are removed, how such services as information
management and human resources operate, and how money is spent.

"Common-sense reform is really just that," he said in a recent
interview. "It’s the way that you build systems and organizations
that get the best out of people and that create room for diverse forms
of excellence."

Central to his vision is the notion that schools and educators be
judged based on "value added" measures of student achievement, or how
much they improve children’s learning over time. Rewards for
performance need to be "large, ongoing, and tied to individual
performance," he writes. Unsuccessful schools should be shut down, and
new faculties assembled from scratch.

"Improvements in student performance should constitute a significant
part, roughly half of a teacher’s job evaluation," he argues,
"but not the entire thing." Other factors, such as whether teachers
mentor their colleagues, go above and beyond the materials tested, and
take on challenging assignments should also influence their pay.

Similarly, he says, sensible accountability systems should take into
account a few important contextual factors. For example, educators in
affluent communities may find it hard to raise test scores
substantially. As long as schools in those circumstances perform at
consistently high levels, that ought to carry more weight than student
improvement, he argues.

Moreover, while tough-edged accountability is good at raising the
floor in education, he contends, "it’s hard for a central agency
to mandate excellence."

That’s why he’s convinced that accountability and choice
are natural complements. "Markets are good at creating mixed services
and provoking excellence," he said in the interview, "but they’re
very unreliable in terms of ensuring that everybody will be adequately
served. So by coupling the two in a sensible way, you provide security,
and you allow schools to do some things really well."

The former assistant professor of education and politics at the
University of Virginia and graduate of the John F. Kennedy School of
Government at Harvard University argues that competition only "works
when it hurts."

In that sense, Mr. Hess concludes, most choice efforts remain firmly
on the "nice" side of school reform. "Schools that lose or gain
students inevitably lose or gain less than the full amount of funding
attached to that student," he writes, "easing the blow to unpopular
schools and giving those schools in demand little incentive to attract
students."

He proposes linking principals’ pay and futures to their
schools’ performance and enrollment, although those who took on
challenging assignments would have that factored into their evaluations
and be paid much more than their peers. Actual funding for each student
would follow the child to a new school as rapidly and completely as
possible, based on a weighted per-pupil formula.

Many within the education community disagree with Mr. Hess’
remedies for improving the nation’s public schools.

"Dr. Hess has contributed a provocative analysis of the ills of
American education, but his Draconian prescriptions for reform seem
likely to worsen the disease," said Gary Sykes, a professor of
education at Michigan State University in East Lansing.

"If urban schools today are high-stress environments for teachers,
administrators, students, and families, then mounding additional
accountability pressures on themdoes not seem likely to improve
matters," Mr. Sykes wrote in an e-mail. "Rather, as countless analysts
have argued, schools serving poor and minority children require
capacity-building strategies that promote formation of learning
communities, with all that concept requires.More accountability is not
the answer."

Hiring and Budgets

In Mr. Hess’ view, though, accountability measures, for
example, will help parents choose schools. States should collect
systemic information on a variety of measures beyond test scores,
including school safety, attendance rates, graduation rates, and
college-going rates, he writes. States should permit a variety of
intermediary groups to use the data to produce guides or ratings that
compare schools in whatever manner they wish, thus helping parents make
sense of it all.

Mr. Hess advocates chartering schools as the most promising option
for increasing the supply of new schools. And he argues that the
fastest and most effective source of growth may be for-profit firms
that can run multiple sites.

But none of those changes will work, he continues, without giving
principals and superintendents the ability to hire, fire, promote, and
reward employees based on performance, and to control their own budgets
and resources.

To pursue that agenda, Mr. Hess returns to themes he’s struck
in the past, including the need to do away with rigid licensure
requirements, embrace performance-based compensation packages, and
shift schools away from traditional pension plans that value longevity
to "defined contribution" arrangements.

Mr. Hess makes a point of not vilifying teachers’ unions in
the book. After all, he notes, they’re only doing their job in
protecting their members. But he’s unlikely to win friends among
those he targets for criticism, ranging from author Jonathan Kozol to
the University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Michael Apple.

"Clearly, I have some fun in the book at the expense of folks whom
I’ve jousted with over the years," he said. "But it’s not
entirely meant to be pejorative.

"I think one of the things that’s gotten lost in the education
discourse," Mr. Hess said, "is the ability to have a spirited but
genial debate."

Vol. 23, Issue 31, Page 14

Published in Print: April 14, 2004, as Author Wants to Rid Education Of ‘Nice’ Reform Policies

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